Wednesday, September 28, 2005

This explains a lot...

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent, in the TimesOnlineUK:

RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.
The 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 sceptical 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."

There's much more, although the phrase "christo-fascist whackjobs" is conspicuously absent. Probably not scientific language. Go read.

*Note and Nap Alert: If you go read the study, make sure to put a pillow on your keyboard first to avoid injury or damage. Here's its title:

Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies

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