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…
