Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side' - Britain - Times Online

Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side' - Britain - Times Online: "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 non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator.

“The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.””"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Fantastic. The article's pretty good: the correlation between infant mortality and religiousness is particularly scary. The phrase used to measure 'absolute belief' was "I know God really exists and I have no doubt about it".
So, presumably maybe there's something in those funny wafer jesus-biscuits? or they don't clean out the font enough.
toller