Religion Screws Society!
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In the US, most God-fearing Jesus Jumpers and even liberal Christians think their faith gives them power over the evils of the world, and generally makes their society a better place to live. They claim to be experts on morality, and desire to inflict their views on others through legislation. They don’t believe in evolution, seeing Darwin as a bad influence, alleging that atheism and secularism have no moral authority.
They bring this spiritual bludgeon to bear on political and religious enemies alike, asserting that they have cornered the market on ethics. If this were the case, we would expect to see the US lead the developed world (most of the rest of which are secularized, godless heathens,) in indicators of a healthy society.
A 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 skeptical 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.
“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”
If the US is an impressive example of anything, it is an example of what happens when citizens favor superstition over science, abstinence over education, and punishment over prevention.
The study concluded that the less devout the nation, the less dysfunctional it was. Of the prosperous democratic nations, the US had the highest rates of murder. Sexually transmitted disease in the US was up to 300 times as high as in the more secular countries. Despite the hard-line Christian stance on abortion, the US suffered from “uniquely high” teen abortion rates, and syphilis infections for all ages. This trend is also reflected within the US. One need only look at statistics for the red vs blue states, with the states highest in conservative Christianity being most likely to suffer more social ills.
Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, said that the evidence accumulated by a number of different studies suggested that religion might actually contribute to social ills. “I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance of the Christian states,” he added.
There is an inverse correlation between the religious dogmatics and the democratic Darwinists, with the most religious of the nations having the worst society. Says Mr Paul, “The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator.
“The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.”
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Die Religion… ist das Opium des Volkes
😉
Like I said, I was raised Catholic – attended 12 years of Catholic schools.
I always thought the whole “limbo” thing stupid and cruel.
Because a baby didn’t get water poured over their head before they died, they couldn’t go to heaven? How sick is that?
Could you provide the reference information for the article in the Journal of Religion and Society and also for the Gregory Paul source? I would like to read those resources to learn more.
Here is a link to the paper- or at least the abstract. http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
The atheist faith screws society worse than any other religion.
Proof, please????
Religion and science are absolutely incompatible.
One of the few true things said from a pulpit.
Science and rationality = Happiness and prosperity.
All else is tosh!
The first graph is total bullshit, during the middle ages muslim scientists made many breakthroughs.
What were these breakthroughs?
yeah, you’re right. coming up with algebra and naming stars and a bunch of stuff..except you’re forgetting that was BEFORE their religion went into their own dark ages….now look at ’em. taking religion too seriously anywhere inhibits an incentive to progress.
Religion Screws Society!
Priests just screw altar boys!
Hey! Maybe Priests aren’t so bad after all?
Religion screws society? Is this some weird nun porn thing that I’m not getting?
What amazes me is not that secular societies can succeed better in the absence of religion, but that we are not even worse off due to fundie extremism than we already are.
The reason we are not worse off due to fundie extremism is down to huge numbers again. The scientific community, and its affiliates, number in the millions. When international prizes are awarded, Nobels e.g., look for Americans to sweep the sciences in most years.
There is a bristling intellectual energy in the US which has thrived alongside medieval superstitions.
What this post does is take the question out of the realm of anecdote and into the realm of empirical comparison. To claim a “benefit” of religion, it’s not enough to just point to this or that case of religion comforting or helping people. It’s a big world and one can always find such cases here and there. The question is, measured by whatever benefit you’re talking about, are the more-religious societies better off than the less-religious ones? Are red states in the US more charitable than blue states? Are people in the US or Mexico less tormented by fear of disease and death than Danish or Japanese people?
In most cases I don’t think any support for these supposed benefits can be found from such empirical comparisons. The concrete ways in which less-religious societies are better off, on the other hand, are measurable and real.
In sheer numbers we’d beat any nation, but a percentage or per capita number takes our superior numbers into account and delivers us a ratio. In another study (a very unpopular one, naturally) liberals and freethinkers are shown to be more intelligent than conservatives. We might all exclaim a collective, “Duh!” at this news, but there is something to be said for education reducing the impact religion has on society’s ills. I couldn’t help noticing that the states (and nations) with the largest amount of ignorance and poverty also tend to be more religious and have more social ills. Does one cause the other? Maybe not, but we ignore the high correlation at our peril.
I personally know dozens of Christians, but even more agnostics and atheists, who are philanthropic, aid-giving, and contributing members of society. People will find an outlet to help (or harm- think Phelps) others even in the absence of a religious structure. This is not to say that there are not a great many religious groups performing humanitarian acts. Would’nt these same people gather together to help out hurricane victims even if they didn’t go to church?
Where the problem lies is in the disbelief of evolution and science (ideas not antithecal to Christianity unless you are an ignoramus); the spreading of disinformation, and the withholding of information (as in being against birth control and sex education while condemning abortion.) Treating women as second class citizens and the natural world as a resource to exploit without conscience is also not going to do much toward the betterment of the human condition.
Comfort and happiness can be bought with drugs, alcohol, expensive psychotherapy, or religion. But there is always a price- some costing society more than others. What amazes me is not that secular societies can succeed better in the absence of religion, but that we are not even worse off due to fundie extremism than we already are.
“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”
The United States appears the most dysfunctional because of the huge numbers involved. The Tea Party followers could number in the 10s of millions, churchgoers over 100 million, voting in a general election 100 million, people without health coverage 45 million, under insured 30 million.
The western European democracies cannot match those numbers, so it’s a matter of, who has most nutters qualifies as the most dysfunctional. No. 1 Baby.
Mother Hen,
Although I am a religious person, I try my level best to be honest with myself.
There is nothing in your post I can dispute. I’m a little surprised at the disparity between the red and blue states, but not terribly so since I lived a few years in Idaho. My personal opinion is that it’s so terribly sad that something which (IMO) can spread a lot of good in the world due to precepts of goodness and kindness instead can be behind some of the most reprehensible acts and behavior one can imagine. I mean this of all religions.
All those of us with faith can do is try and stay true to what we believe is right and hope someday the rest of the religious people shed their fervor and zealotry for human decency. Might be a long wait.
I think that when these religions may have started the populace “needed” them because to them it probably gave them some sense of community. Much like it is now for some people. I know hubby is a devoted Catholic and he is in it for the community of people, not the church itself.
I wonder if religion disappeared tomorrow, would people like Phelps, Dobson and the rest of them, just stop or would they find some other justification for their hate of “the other”.
Jess what about all the Bautismo and quinceanera dress places in Mexican neighborhoods? All the menudo places where hungover people go after Sunday mass? The tamaleros and orchata vendors outside the church? All the tattoo artists who do crosses and Virgin of Guadalupe’s on guys backs?
Think of the economy young lady!
Yes! Think of the economy young lady!!! Oh…sorry 🙂
I’ll kick my own butt for not thinking of that later, now I gotta eat. You two need to stop ganging up on me, my feelings might get hurt and I may not be able to stand up for myself you know.
I do wonder though, if it was not here and the haters that claim to be religious what would they do. I’m not talking people like hubby who really is a devoted guy to his church, I’m talking the Christianists.
=^..^=
When I majored in Sociology back in my University of Colorado days (when I wasn’t majoring in girls or anti-Viet Nam war protests), we were taught that Religion is a governor (or regulator) on the speed of change in society. Religion prevents a society from tearing itself apart.
As a more pracitical matter I have observed through several major disasters (Hurricane Katrina and, just last week, major tornados), that conservative religious groups (fundamentalists, Southern Baptists, etc) are at the absolute spear point of aid and support. They are ALWAYS the first on the scene, chain saws, water, gas generators, food and clothing and, most importantly open hearts full of love, to aid the afflicted. I have literally watched them give a stranger the shirt off their back.
The beat the Red Cross in Katruina by more than a week and FEMA by a month. Last week they were in Yazoo City minutes after the Tornado struck and saved lives and homes. And they are still there long after the government and organized charity leave.
If you had stopped one of them to ask about “evolution” they would have glared you down, handed you a shovel and told you there was work to be done. And they likely would had prayed for you that night.
Bob this is certainly food for thought. Good to see you again.
Religion prevents a society from tearing itself apart.
If this were true, highly-secular societies like Scandinavia and Japan would show a greater tendency to “tear themselves apart” during periods of rapid social change than more-religious societies like the US and Latin America. I see no evidence that that is the case at all.
Religion is a governor (or regulator) on the speed of change in society.
This is just a way of “spinning” the fact that religion slows down progress by obstructing it. Religionists at various times have condemned the development of medicines to treat venereal disease, the availability of birth control, the advancement of sex education, the equal rights of women, and, now, gay legal equality. This effect not a benefit. It is entirely bad.
I do see a benefit with religion. I have a number of friends who regularly attend church (Catholic) and take great comfort in the rituals and the attendant praying. They don’t try to recruit me into the Army of the Lord, and they don’t criticize me because I lean toward Atheism. They don’t get mad at me when I defend a woman’s right to choose. They don’t throw rocks at me when I tell them that in neighborhoods where abortion is more common there is less crime. They don’t gasp in shock when I tell them that I really don’t think there is anything wrong with being gay. Some of them are, like me, Howard Stern fans.
More importantly they have that one extra thing: a belief that comforts them. I don’t have that. Sometimes I am jealous. That being said, however, I do consider religion, at least religious extremism, to be dangerous to the nation. America has its share of God-lovin’, gun totin’ idiots.
As most no doubt know I live in an area where God is behind every tree and it is the most economically and educationally depressed place I have ever lived. There are literally more churches than gas stations, restaurants, or even fast food places. There are Jesus houses across the street from one another with imaginative names like: The House of Heaven and Jesus who is Our Lord and God Church. They go there on Sunday morning and by Sunday afternoon they are talking about hanging those damn “niggers”, Mexicans and Yankees (that would be me).
This was a well written and exceptional post MH.
MH’s point in the comment below, comparing the “comfort” brought by religion to that brought by drugs or alcohol, is an apt one.
People who use drugs or alcohol to run away from their problems are less motivated to face those problems and also likely to be debilitated in solving them. I would argue that religion has the same effect. The belief that disease is God’s inscrutable will and that dead people go to Heaven may be somewhat comforting, but it also breeds a kind of bovine passivity in the face of sickness and death which is not conducive to the development of medical technology to actually address those problems. By its de facto (and, I would argue, innate — I disagree with MH here) hostility to science, it has more generally slowed down the progress which can actually do something about such problems rather than just comfort us about them — the “hole” in the “scientific advancement” graph.
I went through 12 years of Catholic schools.
I got out of there the minute I left high school in 1970. I had been going through the motions since fifth grade.
I got sick of the whole male supremacy BS of the Catholic Church and all the other dogma that simply does NOT make sense.
Who needs religion? It does nothing but cause damage.
I, for one, believe in God because I’ve seen too many things that I couldn’t explain with science or “reason”, no matter how hard I looked. If all of my experiences are sheer coincidence, then there have been a lot of coincidences in my life. I also believe that many people look for excuses not to believe in God because they have something they want to do, and if there is someone who says that what they are doing is wrong, they turn around and call them “intolerant” or “extremist”. Do you see me going door-to-door calling people names and saying someone should be banned from society? No. My faith isn’t about finding a way to push my beliefs on everyone and punishing those who refuse my beliefs. My faith is all about loving everyone, christian or not. Honestly, there are sometimes when I wish I could say that God isn’t real, but I would be lying to myself.
As for being a “gun totin’ idiot”, I have a gun because I believe that people should have the right to protect their rights and interest when the authorities aren’t there to help, or are even the ones doing the wrong. Taking away guns from citizens was the first action from Hitler. You can believe that if someone in office does the same, we can expect the same results.
And the benefit of religion is…???
Sadly this post is fundamentally flawed. There may be some truth in a statement that “the misinterpretation of several belief systems leads unenlightened people to err”. Although we don’t seem to need any external or divine help to make mistakes. A more accurate heading would read
It is clear that self confessed ‘Mad’ Mike and friends is unaware of what the word ‘Religion’ actually means. To say that religion is to blame is tantamount to saying that wisdom or love is to blame for ignorance or hatred.
The word ‘Religion’, modern scholars inform us, comes from the Latin ‘ligare’ which means ‘bind, connect’, probably from a prefixed re-ligare, i.e. re (again) + ligare or “to reconnect”.
To fully reconnect with God is to be free of imperfections and to be in harmony with Divine Will. That is not to say that all students attempting religion are perfect but that is their goal and some Masters have made it.
If you are not in contact with God at all then you are talking without knowing your subject matter which to quote Boonaa Mohhammed is “like shooting without aiming”.
Just because you have not found God yet is not proof enough that God is not there. You will not learn about God if your studies are only pursued in order to disprove. The only way to find God is to try diligently, consistently and submissively with all of your heart. Only then will God be revealed to you by the Grace of God.
The irony here is that once you do have some knowledge of God you will no longer seek to disprove; only to encourage.
Incidentally, the Quran accurately describes stages of embryonic growth that science is only just catching up with and also the Srimad Bhagavatam (The Vedas) has information about the energy within atoms (written 5000 years ago) as well as detailed information about the sense of smell works to which science still is baffled. The so called ‘dark ages’ were the years that most scientific discoveries were made and the reason that this wasn’t widely known is simply that there was no media in which to gain publicity. The graph shows that at 1500ad, the discoveries and inventions became public knowledge but many were conceived much earlier and stolen. This graph also doesn’t even take into account the most ancient language of Sanskrit which is the foremost reservoir of knowledge.
Seeking a more enlightened state is not at odds with what this post is about. The type of religion correlated with the ills of society listed here is specifically fundamentalist Christianity. Religion itself is a construct by man, an effort to understand something, “God” or what happens to us after we die. The existence of this being must be taken on “faith” as it can’t be (or at least hasn’t ever been) proven to exist. One individual who believes in a supernatural sky being may derive comfort and benefit from his belief, and there is nothing wrong with that.
The troubles begin when coercive behaviors done in the name of “religion” or forced moral codes that infringe on basic human rights eat away at society.
The “Dark Ages” afflicted mostly the Western Christian nations, and thankfully the Muslims were able to continue the spirit of discovery. However today the right wing, conservatives, and many (not all) Christians cast themselves at odds with science and do everything in their power to prevent new discoveries (cell research) or discount old science (paleological evidence.) The regressive and repressive nature of today’s Sharia laws keep Muslim women in the dark ages still.
Religious texts are not science books, and were never meant to be the end of man’s knowledge, no matter how enlightened some of them may have been for the time.
Not all atheists dismiss God as an impossiblity. They just regard him as improbable, given the evidence so far. Being unconvinced and uncoerced by the various superstitions of man does not mean one can’t find enlightenment.
>> The only way to find God is to try diligently, consistently >>and submissively with all of your heart.
So are you saying to find religion you need to think with your heart? What does it mean to “try with your heart”? I was under the impression that our brains are the only cognitively functioning organ in our body, but I guess there’s a science that says your heart can have emotion too?
There are none.