Negative effects of religion?

Hmmmm. More highly religious countries, at least industrialized ones, are socially worse off than secular countries.
The Times & The Sunday Times Discussion?ABE: the paper itself is online, too:
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.htmlThis message has been edited by Coragyps, 10-02-2005 11:17 AM

when the same trend is seen within the states between the bible-belt and the more liberal areas?between "blue" states and "red" states?

I know that good ol' Texas, here in the heart of the Bible Belt, leads the nation in teen pregnancy and STD incidence, and is way up there in murder rates. I'm sure the information is available to construct some correlations.

It isn't a very quantitative paper, thus is is difficult to analyze or critique the methodology, much less the conclusions. It's difficult to draw quantitatively supportable inferences from a few coarsely drawn cluster diagrams, without additional descriptive statistics or quantitative analysis presented. The authors do not appear to have attempted to develop well supported metrics for the social indicators they use to draw their conclusions.IOW, in my opinion the paper is of poor scientific quality, and absent other data, I'd be disinclined to regard it as very significant.

I haven't read the entire paper, but I'd say it's more likely that both religion and social problems are affected by another variable. Resistance to change, or poor education systems maybe? Or perhaps social problems lead to religion among certain demographics?Bit of a chicken/egg scenario.Edit:
Somebody prove me wrong so I can use this info against people.This message has been edited by Funkaloyd, Mon, 03-Oct-2005 11:40 AM

Uhhh...Paisano? The author claims exactly that - a preliminary foray into an issue that deserves more study. Or are you claiming that the US has lower murder rates and higher rates of self-identified religious belief than Sweden?

I make no such claim, nor is it any more relevant than the observation that the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s had low rates of self-identified religious belief and high murder rates.I simply state that IMO, the paper is of scientifically poor quality and does a rather poor job of motivating its conclusions from the presented evidence and analysis.I am thus puzzled why self-identified objective rationalists would regard the work as particularly significant.

This paper makes a key assumption that is a glaring flaw. That assumption is that those who have a belief in God follow the morals that are associated with that religion. This is a common assumption that can be easily overturned, and I will give an example if asked to do so. That, and teenagers are a prime example of those who like the forbidden fruit(this holds true for the most part), so if they're told that they shouldn't do something, they want to do it all the more. This will tie straight to the first point. This, and the paper fails to compare the US to a country with a similar population rate, which accounts for the "300" times greater figure of US adolescences with gonorrhoea. Which, by the way, is the only actual statistic the article gives.

No, sorry, I don't see that. Such as assumption would be completely irrelevant to what was being investigated in the study. This again, seem irrelevant to what was being investigated.The proper criticism is that the paper appears to be based on too little data, and raises more questions than it answers. Or, as paisano said in Message 4, "IOW, in my opinion the paper is of poor scientific quality, and absent other data, I'd be disinclined to regard it as very significant."

You said a four letter word.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

The paper said that "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." What it did not say was whether the people who believe and worship a Creator actually follow the beliefs taught by that particular religion. Those who follow the beliefs of that religion are far less likely to commit amoral acts. On the other hand, those who do not live by the beliefs are more likely to do the things the article refers to. I mainly said that(That ,and teenagers are a prime example of those who like the forbidden fruit(this holds true for the most part), so if they're told that they shouldn't do something, they want to do it all the more.) as a point because the article put some weight on adolescent immorality. I agree that it doesn't seem very scientific, I feel that I'm just pointing out some problems with it.

Okay. There was no need to investigate that. The whole purpose was to evaluate the overall effect of religion on the nation as a whole. This was not an investigation into the individual effects on believers. No doubt you take that for granted. I don't. However, it is not what was being investigated, so it would be irrelevant to this particular study. But what you pointed out were not problems.Reading between the lines, your reaction seems to indicate that you find the study embarrassing, and you are trying to explain it away.For myself, I hope this will spur further, more thorough research. Time will tell whether such further research supports or contradicts the current paper.

There was no need to investigate that. The whole purpose was to evaluate the overall effect of religion on the nation as a whole. This was not an investigation into the individual effects on believers. No doubt you take that for granted. I don't. However, it is not what was being investigated, so it would be irrelevant to this particular study.I do not take this for granted. There may not have been a need to to investigate that, but it is still a variable that can and likely did effect the study. Christianity, for example, says to its followers to be holy because God is holy. (1Pet1:15) but how many people do you see or hear of actually trying to follow that?Reading between the lines, your reaction seems to indicate that you find the study embarrassing, and you are trying to explain it away.The study is embarrassing? Yes it is. For religious as well as scientific reasons. I feel that it is appalling that theists think it is ok to commit amoral acts, and then they actually believe that God will forgive them when they are not truly repentent. I get sickened to my stomach to hear about some of the stuff done in the name of God. I do hope this paper will wake up some Christians to get back to their morals. As for further resaearch, who knows?This message has been edited by christ_fanatic, 10-07-2005 01:55 PMThis message has been edited by AdminJar, 10-07-2005 12:58 PM

I think at the very least, that this study should show that 'morality' as we know it, isn't the sole domain of the religious element in society.taken to it's extreme it could suggest that the repressive nature of religions breeds a kind of rebellion, or perhaps pushed problems that would otherwise be confronted and resolved into an underground or taboo state where it goes unchecked, unaccepted and uncontroled.Of course I'm always very untrusting of studies like these regarding anything. If you ask a kid if he/she's had sex or drunk booze, the initial response is going to be a boastful one. i.e. Yes. that's bound to skew the results of these things.

I posted this a while back. Look at the following post.http://EvC Forum: Bush Is Back (part 2)!ABEI'm proud of my work, so might as well post it again

quote:

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Earlier today, Someone made a claim to me that the red states (meaning the states that voted for Bush) should be allowed to dictate the morals of this country since they have the lowest divorce and crime rates in the country. So, I did a little research and found out some things.

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This is a graph of divorce rate per thousand total residents in each state. Data for these graphs can be found at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Just type in divorce rate in the search box for the data. Here is a pdf file of the data.

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This is the divorce rate in 2002.

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This is the divorce rate in 1990.

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The red states are states that voted for Bush. Blue states are states voted for Kerry.

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Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah are states that approved anti-same-sex marriage amendments by double digits. Notice something?

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Since it took me so freaking long to type in the data by hand into excel and made graphs out of them, I'm going to do the crime rate graphs later.

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Hate world.

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Revenge soon!

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This message has been edited by Jacen, 10-07-2005 04:42 PM