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	BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: Religion is bad for society? Friday, September 30, 2005 Religion is bad for society? It's hard to do much with this article, since it's so vague about the methodologies of the survey in question, but it certainly makes for a provocative headline. Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its "spiritual capital". But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills. 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." ... The study concluded that the US was the world's only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from "uniquely high" adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested. Hopefully this one will get some more media play (Though probably not in the US, where the media isn't so much "god-fearing" as is it "fearful of those who claim to be motivated by god.") and we can see some graphs and charts and figures, with which to properly evaluate the claims made. I do know that the US has the world's highest incarceration rate, and that most prisoners have less education than the population at large, and are also/therefore more likely to self describe themselves as religious. Everything relates to everything else though, and the prison population is more about the lacking social safety net in the US, inequalities of race and class, and our ridiculous drug laws. I don't see religion, or lack thereof, as a major factor there. Not that my spur of the moment opinion is based on actual evidence, or anything. Abortion is another interesting one, since I'd think a pretty direct connection could be made between level of sexual education, access to and knowledge of birth control, and abortion. After all, women who don't get pregnant virtually never have abortions, and if you know enough to use birth control you're unlikely to get pregnant. I recall reading that Russia used to have far and away the highest rate of abortions in the world, a fact that was directly tied to a chronic lack of birth control and nearly cost-free medical care, which included abortions. It had little or nothing to do with their believing or not believing in Christianity or any other religion. Abortion, and unwanted pregnancies in general can also be tied directly to poverty, (as can incarceration rates, as mentioned above) and there is a huge permanent lower class in the US that I assume boosts the abortion rates. The flavor of Christianity many in the US favor certainly plays a part in that issue, since it discourages birth control and sex, and since people all through human history have inevitably had sex, no matter what their religion of choice said about it, the religious ones in the US just end up doing it secretly, guiltily, and without protection. Of course their religion says not to have abortions either, but... yeah. Eighteen years, and all that. Anyway, it's a juicy issue for discussion and study, and I'm sure Christian researchers can and will chew up the same stats and facts and figures and come up with conclusions that directly oppose those of this study's author. Lies, damned lies, and statistics, after all. Posted by: Flux # 5:11 AM Comments: I'll say this much: if Islam is any indication of how nations are affected by religion, then I say begone with it. Also, a little tidbit. I went to a Christian middle school, and most of my classmates and I went to a public high school. Does the fact that at least 80% of my female classmates from middle school became whores mean anything in particular? I'm thinkin' that religion "protected" them from the notion of whoredom, and the real world jumped on them (literally) because they had no immunity...or something of that nature. Another thing: Religion has little to do with abortion rates...stupidity is a more signifigant factor. Birth control and "unprotected sex burns your genitals out" scare tactics are passed around like candy in schools, so only idiots convinced that they won't have sex, get drunk, and have sex have abortions. Solution? Shoot every teenager who gets drunk. In the knee first if you must, but repeat offenders are just asking for it. #: 9:13 AM posted by Anonymous "After all, women who don't get pregnant virtually never have abortions," Hahaha. - "I think I'll nip down to the hospital today for an abortion" = 'Why dear?! Are you pregnant!?' - "No, it just seems like the 'in' thing right now" Also, my sister who is studying psychology has said that prisoners have much higher rates of brain damage than the normal population. Most of it, of course, is fairly minor. She has said something like 75% of inmates have some to some degree. Unfortunately I don't know which country that's talking about etc etc, but it does put another spin on things. You could argue that a lot of people end up in jail because they haven't received adequite care for their injury due to the social stigma of brain injury not being a 'real' injury and something that people should just 'get over' and society's lack of willing to pay for appropriate care for victims of these kinds of injuries. #: 1:20 PM posted by Anonymous Post a Comment << Home Archives May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2012

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