Catholic Scientist writes:
The point of contention that I have with that, is that the private Catholic grade and high schools that I went to were waaay better than the public alternative.
I made a halfhearted and unsuccessful effort to find supporting data for the Catholic data point for education, with only around 27% graduating college. A high percentage of Catholic high school graduates go on to college (84.7% according to one source), but of course not all Catholic students attend Catholic high schools, so that's not very helpful. That's as much as I could find out in the couple minutes I allowed myself.
Percy writes:
So are atheists behaving insanely by ignoring all the benefits of religion?
Well, I don't like that word "insane", but I do think there's an irrational element to just "write it all off".
My question was just a paraphrase of the thread's title.
Sometimes we need a good nudging, but I don't think us Catholics are one for ignoring reality.
As some of the posted links have commented, culture is also a significant factor in income and education. The low numbers for US Catholics are probably influenced by its Irish immigrant roots, just as the higher numbers for Unitarians and Episcopalians are by their associations with the higher socio-economic classes in the 18th and 19th centuries.
But that being said, Catholicism does have a number of beliefs not rooted in reality, some shared with other conservative religions, some unique. The Eucharist seems harmless, but family size has a strong inverse influence on income and education.
--Percy