September 19, 2009
Does a Generous Welfare State Undermine Religious Belief?
Somewhere, Marx suggests that religion stems from a projection of our collective powers onto a fictitious entity. Religious beliefs, he thought, emerge and thrive when we are unable to exercise those collective powers. Gregory Paul's research suggests that there may be some truth to this hypothesis. Over at Evolutionary Psychology:
As some nations become increasingly secular, one may wonder what role religious beliefs play for those living in technologically advanced societies. Advocates for religious systems often argue that these beliefs are instrumental in providing moral foundation necessary for a healthy, cohesive society - a view shared by Benjamin Franklin and Dostoyevsky.
In a follow up to his 2005 paper, Gregory Paul argues that high religiosity is not universal to human populations, and it is actually inversely related to a wide range of socio-economic indicators representing the health of modern democracies. Paul holds that once a nation's population becomes prosperous and secure, for example through economic security and universal health care, much of the population looses interest in seeking the aid and protection of supernatural entities. This effect appears to be so consistent that it may prevent nations from being highly religious while enjoying good internal socioeconomic conditions.
National level statistics suggest that strong mass religiosity is invariably associated with high levels of stress and anxiety, which are created by impoverishment, inequality, or economic security, related to high levels of societal dysfunction. These relationships are largely consistent when the United States, an outlier amongst advanced democracies in the high level of both religious belief and social decay, is removed from the comparison.
The belief held by some scholars that strong religious belief is the universal human condition deeply rooted in our psyches, may be false. Also contradicted is the hypothesis that evolutionary selective forces have played the leading role in determining the popularity of religion. Environmental conditions appear to exert great influence on the degree to which religious beliefs are held. The popularity of religious belief may be a reflection of a psychological mechanism for coping with the high levels of stress and anxiety resulting from adverse social and economic environments.
(The study, The Chronic Dependence of Popular Religiosity upon Dysfunctional Psychosociological Conditions, can be accessed here.)
Posted by Robin Varghese at 06:11 PM | Permalink
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Whether religion leads directly to dysfunctionality, or religions merely flourish in dysfunctional societies, neither conclusion from this study flatters religion.
Religious Belief & Societal Health
New Study Reveals that Religion
Does Not Lead to a Healthier Society
by Matthew Provonsha
It is commonly held that religion makes people more just, compassionate, and moral, but a new study suggests that the data belie that assumption. In fact, at first glance it would seem, religion has the opposite effect. The extensive study, “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religi-osity and Secularism in the Prosperous Demo-cracies,” published in the Journal of Religion and Society (http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html) examines statistics from eighteen of the most developed democratic nations. It reveals clear correlations between various indicators of social strife and religiosity, showing that whether religion causes social strife or not, it certainly does not prevent it.
The author of the study, Gregory S. Paul, writes that it is a “first, brief look at an important subject that has been almost entirely neglected by social scientists … not an attempt to present a definitive study that establishes cause versus effect between religiosity, secularism and societal health.” However, the study does show a direct correlation between religiosity and dysfunctionality, which if nothing else, disproves the widespread belief that religiosity is beneficial, that secularism is detrimental, and that widespread acceptance of evolution is harmful.
Paul begins by explaining how far his findings diverge from common assumptions. He even quotes Benjamin Franklin and Dostoevsky to show how old these common-misconceptions are. Dostoevsky wrote, “if God does not exist, then everything is permissible.” Benjamin Franklin noted, “religion will be a powerful regulator of our actions, give us peace and tranquility within our minds, and render us benevolent, useful and beneficial to others.”
To this day, the belief that religiosity is socially beneficial is widespread in America, especially amongst politicians, as Paul notes: “The current [at that time] House majority leader T. DeLay contends that high crime rates and tragedies like the Columbine assault will continue as long schools teach children ‘that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized [sic] out of some primordial soup of mud.’” But this view is not exclusively Republican, Paul explains, or even conservative: “presidential candidate Al Gore supported teaching both creationism and evolution, his running mate Joe Lieberman asserted that belief in a creator is instrumental to ‘secure the moral future of our nation, and raise the quality of life for all our people,’ and presidential candidate John Kerry emphasized his religious values in the latter part of his campaign.” Surveys show that many Americans agree “their church-going nation is an exceptional, God blessed, ‘shining city on the hill’ that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly skeptical world. ”This assumption flies in the face of the actual statistical evidence that Paul examined.
The study focuses on the prosperous democracies, because “levels of religious and nonreligious belief and practice, and indicators of societal health and dysfunction, have been most extensively and reliably surveyed” in them. Also, “The cultural and economic similarity of the developed democracies minimizes the variability of factors outside those being examined.” With a database of 800 million people, this study is far more reliable than results based on smaller sample sizes used in other such studies. The data are also current and extensive, collected in the middle and latter half of the 1990s and early 2000s from the International Social Survey Programme, the UN Development Programme, the World Health Organization, Gallup, and other well-documented sources.
For this study’s purpose, “dysfunctionality” is defined by such indicators of poor societal health as homicide, suicide, low life expectancy, STD infection, abortion, early pregnancy, and high childhood mortality (under five-years old). Religiosity is measured by biblical literalism, frequency of prayer and service attendance, as well as absolute belief in a creator in terms of ardency, conservatism, and activities.
Paul’s results are presented in nine charts. The first compares acceptance of evolution with various indicators of religiosity. From this Paul concludes that, “The absence of exceptions to the negative correlation between absolute belief in a creator and acceptance of evolution, plus the lack of a significant religious revival in any developed democracy where evolution is popular, cast doubt on the thesis that societies can combine high rates of both religiosity and agreement with evolutionary science. Such an amalgamation may not be practical.” He adds: “When deciding between supernatural and natural causes is a matter of opinion large numbers are likely to opt for the latter,” and that, “Conversely, evolution will probably not enjoy strong majority support in the U.S. until religiosity declines markedly.”
All of the subsequent results that compare religiosity against dysfunctionality show a basic correlation between the two, though anomalies exist. Paul’s second figure (Figures 1 and 2 here) shows a positive correlation between religiosity and homicide rates.
Figure 1 and 2
The United States is a strong exception, experiencing far higher rates of homicide than even (strongly theistic) Portugal, while Portugal itself is beset by much more homicide than the secular developed democracies. Hardly a “shining city on a hill” to the rest of the world, Paul writes that, “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.” This deviates immensely from what most Americans consider to be common wisdom: that religion is beneficial. “But in the other developed democracies religiosity continues to decline precipitously and avowed atheists often win high office, even as clergies warn about adverse societal consequences if a revival of creator belief does not occur.”
Figure 3
Figure 4
Despite the best efforts of “pro-life” Americans, abortion rates are much higher in our Christian nation, and lowest in relatively secular ones such as Japan, France, and the Scandinavian countries (Figures 3 and 4). 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. This would seem to indicate that there is a positive correlation between religiosity and dysfunctionality, but what does that mean?
The question is one of causation, and there is no clear answer. Whether religion leads directly to dysfunctionality, or religions merely flourish in dysfunctional societies, neither conclusion from this study flatters religion. The first tells us that religion is a hindrance to the development of moral character, and the second that religion hinders progress by distracting us from our troubles (with imaginary solutions to real problems). This study is complicated enough that I do not think that we can draw definitive negative conclusions about religion. But we can at least conclude, contrary to popular belief in this country, that it is not a given that religious societies are better, healthier, or more moral. What we can be clear about from this study is that highly religious societies can be dysfunctional, whereas by comparison secular societies in which evolution is largely accepted display real social cohesion and societal well-being. As is always the case in science, more data and additional research will help clarify our conclusions.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Sep 19, 2009 7:34:54 PM
Do we have to keep doing this?
lol. google it for yourself. I've done my part in discrediting this loon whenever he gets referenced here. No serious sociological statistician takes his polemical conclusions seriously, and the fact that people here apparently do lends as much intellectual credence to the 3QuarksDaily community (and now editorship) as their apparent acceptance of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
To be fair: Paul is a talented sketcher, if a less talented renderer, of dinosaurs. And there his talents end. I understand Dave's motivations, he's infected, but my disapointment in realizing how wrong I was about Robin is simply shattering.
I'm going to bed.
Posted by: Carlos | Sep 19, 2009 8:43:54 PM
"No serious sociological statistician takes his polemical conclusions seriously, and the fact that people here apparently do lends as much intellectual credence to the 3QuarksDaily community (and now editorship) as their apparent acceptance of 9/11 conspiracy theories."
Oh no! No sooner do some of us post a comment than 3QD's gravitas sees a precipitous decline. It must be almost as embarrassing as someone believing in the efficacy of homeopathy.
Posted by: Louise Gordon | Sep 19, 2009 10:29:00 PM
I'm not a statistician or a sociologist but it seems to me that equating a country with a society is erroneous and renders the entire study meaningless.
I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It is a global church and I think it defines my society much more than the country I live in. I lived in Venezuela for two years and I relate to Latter-Day Saint Venezuelans much more than I do with the average American.
So is the highly religious society in which I live dysfunctional? Based on purely anecdotal evidence, I think not. I'm closely connected with my community and I never hear of homicides, STDs, and whatever else there was in the definition of dysfunctional.
This seems to be a case of using "science" to say "something" which has little to no applicability to reality.
I'm research engineer and do a lot of modeling. I've met engineers who are so lost in their model world that they make dumb conclusions because they forget it's just a model.
Posted by: Phillip | Sep 19, 2009 10:32:19 PM
"I'm not a statistician or a sociologist but it seems to me that equating a country with a society is erroneous and renders the entire study meaningless."
Because you, Phillip, personally don't like the way they used a word (which is a perfectly fine way to use the word, by the way), that implies that their whole study is meaningless? Let's suppose, just to humor you, that we strike out all instances of "society" and replace them with "country". What does that change in the study or its conclusions? Answer: absolutely nothing.
"So is the highly religious society in which I live dysfunctional?"
What are you trying to do here, use their conclusion but with your definition of society, as if that would refute their study?
Posted by: billy | Sep 20, 2009 1:03:40 AM
"So is the highly religious society in which I live dysfunctional?"
Yes. Any society that shuns coffee clearly has not come of age.
Posted by: Cyrus Hall | Sep 20, 2009 7:20:42 AM
At this point it is obvious that societal health and and religion are related, with the less religious societies scoring and being healthier--
It is there for all to see.
Our religious friends just can't except the data, or the life they have been living will get shaky and groundless, and they will soon be screaming in a fetal position on the ground.
Reality is not always pleasant to the ideologically committed.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Sep 20, 2009 12:31:24 PM
Dave-
As an atheist I would love to support your most recent post, but the facts are not entirely clear cut. Take a look at crime in, say, Utah. You'll find that besides rape, the per capita rate is much lower across the board than the rest of the U.S. Is it religion? Some of the structure around it may play a contributing role, but the larger point is just how hard it is to prove your argument. Or even find solid data for it.
Most likely one can form an religious and irrational society that has great social statistics. I see no natural law that prohibits it. The question is whether it makes any sense to base a society around a myth, for better or for worse.
Posted by: Cyrus Hall | Sep 20, 2009 5:10:10 PM
Cyrus-
Did you read the article?
It answers your questions, and point to statistics about societal health.
The evidence is overwhelming that religion (lack of) correlates with healthy societies.
This is not an opinion-- look at the statistics at the end of the publication.
Posted by: Dave Ranning | Sep 20, 2009 5:56:21 PM
A good joke, this one. I laughed a lot...
Posted by: Chris Horner | Sep 20, 2009 6:21:38 PM
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