Challenge to faith. Is religion a Blight upon Humanity?
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
This question was posed on a blog a few months ago with the following note:blight n. - Something that impairs growth, withers hopes and ambitions, or impedes progress and prosperity.
The question is simple - to paraphrase Bertrand Russell, is religion the dragon that needs slaying in order to facilitate the societal progress that will benefit all of humanity?
As support for this question, the blogger cited a study from a few years ago. The Study in the Journal of Religion and Society has a very academic sounding title “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies”. It compares a variety of social factors with the level of church attendance and belief in God across most western democracies. Figure 8 above is from this article. What the study finds is disturbing. Here are excerpts from the study.
Benjamin Franklin stated that “religion will be a powerful regulator of our actions, give us peace and tranquility within our minds, and render us benevolent, useful and beneficial to others”
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 most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly.
None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction.
The United States’ deep social problems are all the more disturbing because the nation enjoys exceptional per capita wealth among the major western nations. Spending on health care is much higher as a portion of the GDP and per capita, by a factor of a third to two or more, than in any other developed democracy. The U.S. is therefore the least efficient western nation in terms of converting wealth into cultural and physical health.
There is evidence that within the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms
So what does this mean? Knowing a little bit about scientific investigation, I would say that the study demonstrates correlation but not a causal relationship. But causal or not finding out that there is a relationship between religion and social problems is very troubling. Religious people may not be causing these problems, but they sure seem to be using religion for relief from reality. Our faith is supposed to make us care for the fellow human being, for the poor and wretched. That does not seem to be happening. The fact that a number of social problems are much greater in religious countries at least says that we are ALL collectively not living up to the teachings of our faiths. Religion may not be making society worse but society isn’t being made better by more religious people. This is the biggest challenge for religion and if we keep ignoring this disparity the exodus of people leaving faiths will only grow.
NOTE: I have modified Fig 8 by making the numbers and letters bigger and more readable and added a lettering code at the bottom to identify the countries.
Khalid Shah, 50, is an American Muslim who came to the U.S. 32 years ago. He and his wife have lived in the St. Louis area since 1990, and have been active in a variety of interfaith activities as well as in the local Muslim communities. They have both spoken about Islam at a variety of houses of worship. After working as an engineer for most of his career, he is currently a small business owner. 
Yes, religion is a blight. The negatives outweigh the positives, by a good amount. Anyone in doubt only needs to study history.
I’ve now read past the headline, taking in the whole piece. I think a big factor in the U.S. regarding this issue is the employment of Satan as a ready scapegoat. People blame their own shortcomings and personal issues — or those of others — on `Satan,’ rather than acknowledging a dark, disturbing reality with their own natures. In essence, they pass the buck, and instead of actively working to correct their own defects, they passively turn to `formalized hope’ (prayer). And still we wonder why the problems cited above persist? No, the beast is within, not without. It’s no wonder the churches don’t encourage people to deal with the real issue. The idea of Satan being out there keeps food on the clergy dinner plate. It’s interesting you quote Russell — one of my favorite writers — because I think it was Russell who claimed this: that it could be argued that Satan is the Christian Church’s best friend. Could be true.
EJ,
Thank you for your comment. The challenge is also to re-concile the fact that there are so many deeply religious people doing extra ordinary things. There are two sides to this coin. Faith can be tranformative, if given a chance. The challenge is how to keep (bring back?) this transformative power of faith in institutional religion, where conformance and comforting routine seem to lead to a distancing from the ‘real world’ problems and challenges and what should be our role. I know to some these may sound generalizations but the cumulative effect represented by this study is pointing to some very serious dysfunction within organized religion.
This explains a bit about the JBS prom theme.
I have always thought the primary function of religion is to help each person with their personal relationship with God. Any impact on society from people building on their relationship with our Father, God, is a result of that relationship. In my lifetime, I have seen a shift in organized religion from promoting God fearing people to promoting social action. Small wonder, as your post suggests, that religion is getting blamed for social ills.
EJ-
That is such an astute comment. Using your logic, atheism is a terrible concept. One only needs to look at the 20th century and the sins of Stalin and Pol Pot among others.
See? Trolling is easy.
It’s funny. Whenever anyone disagrees with your statement, you’re automatically a troll.
Religion has been the biggest roadblock to science and discovery throughout history. At least the Catholics apologized for the Galileo thing eventually.
Interstingly,though if you research countries noted,the highest scoring countries(lowest on the graph)all have Christian churches of state-many requiring christian studies in public schools and government funding of those state religions.Several require that the top officials belong to the church of state and back it-one requiring the king and half the cabinet(min.)belong to the state church.All of the best scoring countries mentioned have Christmas,Easter,and Good Friday as National Holidays-one even fining businesses for being open on these holidays.( all this combined makes franklins statement seem more valid)
The more tolerant(tolerating everything but the intolerant) stand for nothing secular governments where everyone serves the whoever god is to you god score the worst.Seems to be what the bible refers to as those having a form of godliness but denying the power and authority of.Any correlation but not causal relationship there?How about a graph?
Perhaps the problem in the US is this: The religious groups in America are spending so much time fighting with each other over points of doctrine that they are forgetting the basics. If the religious groups in the US actually DID what they are supposed to be doing, then it would be a very different place.
We (I include myself here) spend so much time and energy finding proof-texts to justify our excess and our intolerance that we miss the big picture.