Religion is Bad for Society

[Petyr Baelish]

Yet more evidence that ignorance and superstition breed evil. Voltaire hit the nail on the head when he said that those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities...



The Times September 27, 2005

The Times

Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

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

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.

It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality.

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.”

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

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.

Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”

He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added.

Mr Paul delayed releasing the study until now because of Hurricane Katrina. He said that the evidence accumulated by a number of different studies suggested that religion might actually contribute to social ills. “I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance of the Christian states,” he added.

He said that most Western nations would become more religious only if the theory of evolution could be overturned and the existence of God scientifically proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would not enjoy majority support in the US unless there was a marked decline in religious belief, Mr Paul said.

“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.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1798944,00.html

[jasonlfunk]

The article contained no information linking to amount of evil in the U.S. to religion. It was being merely assumed - this is a horrible article. There are a ton of other factors that could be the reason why the U.S. may be more evil (if indeed it acutally is) then other countries. I do not see the connection to religion... The author could have wrote the article to say "Becuase the U.S. is next to Canda they have higher murder rates" or "Becuase the U.S. broke off from Britian they have higher murder rates" and the article would not lose any credibility. There is no evidance of a causal relationship between the religion in America and the evil in America that is outlined in the article. The author is using a bias to make connections where there are none.

According to www.nationmaster.com

The U.S. ranks 8th the world in total crime per capita behind more secular countries like Finland, New Zealadn, and the U.K. But it also ranks ahead of some more secular countries... There is no obvious link between whether a country calls itself religius and it's crime rate.

[Petr]

These statistics are totally rigged for that reason alone that they don't contain the fact that non-White minorities, who are mostly responsible for weighing statistics down, are much bigger in USA than in Europe. The condition of White working class is clearly healthier in America than in, say, England.


Petr

[Petyr Baelish]

These statistics are totally rigged for that reason alone that they don't contain the fact that non-White minorities, who are mostly responsible for weighing statistics down, are much bigger in USA than in Europe.

So what? Non-white minorities in the USA (blacks and Latin Americans, especially) tend to be even more religious than the white population.

The condition of White working class is clearly healthier in America than in, say, England.


Petr

Prove it.

[Petr]

Prove it.
Here you go, straight from Steve Sailer:

http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20431&highlight=gledhill



More bad analysis:

Drudge links to a Time of London article that claims:

'Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

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

The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.

It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires ..

The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports... “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.”


Let's play Spot the Fallacies!

First, the Times should try reading the Times, which ran in its Sept. 18th edition an article entitled "Scotland tops world league for violent crime;"

According to the UN study, 3% of Scots had been victims of assault. The second highest figure was recorded in England and Wales at 2.8%, compared with 2% in America and 0.1% in Japan.

The U.S. has roughly 200,000,000 guns, so murder rates are always higher here, but in recent decades, the UK has been proving Heinlein's Corollary that a disarmed society is a drunken, brawling, home-invading society.


Second, American statistics look pretty good if you take out the 27% of the population that is black or Hispanic to make it more racially comparable to Britain's population. Blacks are incarcerated for violent crimes at 7.1 times the non-Hispanic white rate and Hispanics at 3.4 times the white rate. Similarly, blacks have about four times as many abortions and Hispanics about twice as many. All the other measures the article cites are worse among blacks and Hispanics as well.

When you do a direct apples to apples comparison of the white working classes in Britain and America, the Brits appear to be falling apart morally (e.g, as measured by drunkenness, assault, and burglary), while the Americans are holding their own. The single most plausible explanation, as I pointed out in VDARE.com earlier this year, is the stronger Christianity of the Americans.

***


///////////////////////////////////


That Religion and Bad Behavior article:

A reader writes:

I think the meme in this "Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side" article in the London Times that Drudge pushed yesterday - that religion is bad for society - is starting to "tip" which means that a well put together response by you might also have a chance to circulate.

I doubt it! Lies go halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on.

Newsgator highlighted this as the "top internet story of the day" today, with 127 blog links. I think it is pretty telling of journalistic biases that they would run with an article like this, and not with one about IQ.

The original article, Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies, appeared in the Journal of Religion & Society put out by the Rabbi Myer and Dorothy Kripke Center for the Study of Religion and Society at Creighton University. It's by Gregory S. Paul of Baltimore, MD, who doesn't list any academic qualifications (not that there's anything wrong with that!).

Paul's basic gimmick is an old chestnut, one I've seen dozens of times before: to make America look bad by comparing crime and other statistics for the entire American population, which is 27% black or Hispanic, to Europeans countries that are at least 90% white. That way, you can prove that secularism or socialism or soccer or whatever you like about Europe is better for people than whatever you don't like about America.

This sleight of hand can be highly effective in duping readers into making apples to oranges comparisons between the U.S. and European countries. Why? Because we aren't allowed -- in polite society -- to write about how much higher the crime rates, abortion rates, STD rates and the like are for blacks and Hispanics than they are for whites or Asians.

But let's just put that key point about the racial make-up of the populations aside for the moment and look at some recent crime statistics for the overall American population, all races, versus various European populations. And America still comes out looking pretty good. Europe (not just Britain) has been undergoing a moral decline, at least as reflected in crime statistics, whereas the U.S. seems to have been on the moral upswing since a recent low point in the early 1990s.


Another reader scoffs at my initial objection to this article:

So the religious whites of the USA are less criminal
than in Britain. So what, you have one data point.
Whites in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Spain,
Portugal, France, Holland, Italy, Belgium, Finland,
Germany, and Nordic countries are all both less
religious and less violent than US whites...

Your theory fails.

Not so fast. That may (or may not) have once been true, but it's not true these days.

Here is the 2000 International Crime Victimization Survey report of the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute. Figure 5 shows what % of respondents in 17 advanced countries said they were victims of "selected contact crimes" (robbery, sexual assault, or assault with force) in 1999.

The 17-country average was 2.4%. For the U.S., though only 1.9 % of the overall population had been victimized, putting the U.S. 13th out of 17 affluent countries in violent crime victimization prevalence. The most violent country in 1999 on this measure was Australia, at 4.1%, followed by England & Wales, Canada, Scotland, Poland, Finland, Northern Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, and then, finally, the USA (1.9%).


And, for American whites, that violent victimization prevalence figure would be significantly lower, perhaps down around, say, 1.2% -- because whites get victimized a lot less than blacks and Hispanics. (For example, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics states, "Blacks were 6 times more likely than whites to be murdered in 2002." That's a consequence of the fact, according to BJS, that, "Blacks were 7 times more likely than whites to commit homicide in 2002." For homicide, the white victimization rate, which includes a lot of Hispanics, was 59% of the overall American homicide rate, so, 1.2% looks like a good guess.)


This suggests that for American whites, the chance of being violently victimized in a year would probably be below even Belgium, Catalan Spain, and Portugal. Japan, though, would still be off in its own nonviolent universe at only 0.4%.

Of course, what matters for the question of whether the greater religiousness of American whites makes them behave worse than European whites is not the chance of being violently victimized, but the chance of them violently victimizing someone else. Since a moderate fraction of the victimizations of American whites are committed by nonwhites, further research might show that as of the last few years, Americans might be the least violent whites on Earth.

There are other ways to measure crime rates, and I'd encourage you to look at the other graphs in this chapter of the UN report. The summary graph for prevalence of being a victim of any kind of crime, including property crimes, shows Americans (of all races) coming in only 11th worst out of 17. On the other hand, if you measure total reported incidents of victimizations, Americans come in about fifth or sixth overall, reflecting the high rate of recurrent victimizations of minorities (by other minorities, it ought to be needless to say, but it's not).

The brand new version of this UN crime victimization survey will be out shortly. The Times of London had a preview, which showed roughly the same results as in 1999.

Of course, probably the biggest reason for America's low crime rates these days is because we lock up vast numbers of bad guys while the Europeans let them out too quickly. The big crime surge started in America in the 1960s when we cut prison sentences. Here's a graph showing how in America the murder rate (red) turned up about 1965 while the imprisonment rate (blue) dropped. We finally got tough in the 1980s and a decade or so later we saw a payoff.


The European crime surge started later than the American one, so they are still in the liberal wimp phase of response. (Also, having more guns, our worst criminals kill each other off at rates high enough, especially during the cracks years, to put a dent, I suspect, in the total crime rate.) Still, it's not implausible to guess that the Europeans are spending down their enormous inheritance of Christian morality and aren't making any new deposits. You can coast for a long time on the civilization your ancestors built, but not forever.

As for abortion rates, the pro-choice Alan Guttmacher think tank reports that in America the number of abortions per 1,000 non-Hispanic white women fell from 19 in 1991 to 11 by 1999. The African-American abortion rate was about 54 in 1999 (or close to five times higher) and the Hispanic rate about 30, making the overall national rate almost twice the white rate.

The most recent Alan Guttmacher Institute report says that non-Hispanic whites have only 40.9% of all abortions in the U.S.

The abortion rate in America (all races) is currently 20.9, compared to a global average of about 38 in "developed countries." The white American abortion rate of approximately 11 compares favorably to five of the seven advanced, mostly white countries broken out in the most AGI report: Australia 22.2, Sweden 18.7, Denmark 16.5, Canada 16.4, England & Wales 15.6. The U.S. white abortion rate, however, is worse than in Germany 7.6 and Holland 6.5.

So, the crime and abortion evidence suggests that religion has a good effect on the behavior of America's whites, although probably not as good an effect as long prison terms.


A Scandinavian reader comments:

I grew up in one of those low-crime, low-everything, nice Scandinavian countries. I spent my high-school years in an area with a substantial evangelical population and I can assure you that the evangelicals were quite simply better behaved than us secularists in just about every category imaginable. Was it their faith that guided them to less anti-social behavior?

Duh!

...

What about the religion-crime connection within the U.S.? A social scientists writes:

Another way to approach the religion-crime issue is to compare U.S. regions. Using data from the General Social Survey on the nine divisions of the country, I calculated the correlation between the percent of whites who never attend church with the share who have ever been arrested: It was r = .77. For example, the Pacific division, dominated by California, has the highest arrest rate and the highest percent of people who never attend religious services--25.4%.

Interesting. I hadn't expected it to be that high.


Petr

[Petr]

And here that VDARE article that Steve was alluding to:

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050410_ruin.htm

...


So, despite obvious problems, such as the crystal methamphetamine epidemic, the American white working class has shown more impressive moral hardiness than the English.

How come?

Religion. Perhaps the most striking and important difference: the strength of Christianity here—whereas the main religious emotion in Britain is apathy. Phil Zuckerman has noted

"84 percent of Americans believe that Jesus is God or the son of God, compared to 46 percent of the British… And over 70 percent of Americans believe in hell, compared to only 28 percent of the British… Nearly 45 percent of Americans attend church … once a week, compared to … 13 percent of the British… Between 39 and 46 percent of Americans describe themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians."

At least some American Christians are building alternative institutions to shield their families from decadent popular culture. But the British working class appear wholly addicted to the prolefeed on the telly.

Why is the U.S. more religious? Father Andrew Greeley has suggested that it's because America has a dynamic competitive marketplace for churches, while the Church of England is a typically inefficient and unmotivated government monopoly.

Another (unspoken) reason: with the partial exception of the Roman Catholic Church, church services give Americans a rare opportunity to indulge in ethnic solidarity.

Liberals like to quote Martin Luther King’s complaint that "Eleven o'clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour" of the week. But this opportunity to associate with one's own kind seems to be viewed favorably by many Americans. Even the Rev. King, for example, found his political base in the black churches.

...


Petr

[FranzJoseph]

Religion. Perhaps the most striking and important difference: the strength of Christianity here—whereas the main religious emotion in Britain is apathy.

No Brits rebuking this indicates it may be true. :D

At the same time, this weary baloney about Europe's "de-Christianization" should attract at least some attention. Look how the author uses "Christian" and "religious" as synonyms. Are they? Britain leads the world in the number of gnostic and neopagan books published. This tells me the picture is not as simple as American evangelicals want me to believe.

But let's here from a Brit on this, eh?

[Petr]

Look how the author uses "Christian" and "religious" as synonyms. Are they? Britain leads the world in the number of gnostic and neopagan books published. This tells me the picture is not as simple as American evangelicals want me to believe.
Not many people take that crap seriously. Show me a neo-pagan who would be ready to die for his/her beliefs, that's a genuine litmus test of faith.

(Oswald Spengler wrote in The Decline of the West that one of the hallmarks of a truly materialistic society is a tendency to flirt with quasi-spiritual hokum)


Petr

[Felix the Cat]

Re. Scotland

Bear in mind that a lot of the violence that goes on in Scotland is Catholic v. Protestant in nature

ie. you're seeing overspill from the trouble in Ireland

If a gang of Protestants beat a Catholic to death in Glasgow, how can this possibly be due to "lack of religion"?

[FranzJoseph]

(Oswald Spengler wrote in The Decline of the West that one of the hallmarks of a truly materialistic society is a tendency to flirt with quasi-spiritual hokum)

(I'm writing on the Phora.net that one of the hallmarks of a truly circular thread is a tendency to flirt with Oswald Spengler's hokum.)

What, no Brits here? Depressing. When I were a lad they'd bring their cricket bats to rumors of an insult. Blightly don't let me down!

[daisy]

the evil in AmericaGod didn't promise us a rose garden. he never said it was going to be a rose garden.

[Scales]

No Brits rebuking this indicates it may be true. :D

At the same time, this weary baloney about Europe's "de-Christianization" should attract at least some attention. Look how the author uses "Christian" and "religious" as synonyms. Are they? Britain leads the world in the number of gnostic and neopagan books published. This tells me the picture is not as simple as American evangelicals want me to believe.

But let's here from a Brit on this, eh?
I'm British, an atheist, and I find religion fascinating, in the same way that I like reading mythology and watching movies.

Religion. Perhaps the most striking and important difference: the strength of Christianity here—whereas the main religious emotion in Britain is apathy.
This is what you wanted a Brit to comment on?

Personally, I don't know what's worse -believing in a magical old man who lives in the sky or not believing in anything at all. At least the former has an ethical substance to it; but it also relies on a deluded rejection of the scientific method that I neither respect nor identify with.

[Felix the Cat]

If you ignore places like Ulster and Scotland, Petr's analysis is broadly correct. Americans are indeed more religious than Europeans, and display fewer social pathologies

However this is not new, it's been the situation for centuries

North America has always attracted a disproportionate number of religious dreamers and city-on-a-hill builders, who then passed these tendencies on to their descendants

Puritanism is still strong. eg. many Americans still have a strong distaste for alcohol. This ridiculous anti-tobacco hysteria is another example

That white Brits drink significantly more than white Americans accounts for much of the difference in violent crime statistics between the two

But the "Europe is in moral collapse" argument doesn't make sense, since alcoholism and drink-related violence were actually much worse in the past than they are today.

[jcs]

Americans are indeed more religious than Europeans, and display fewer social pathologies
We're not more religious; we've simply become experts in using Christianity as a political tool.
Don't applaud America for this. Better to be atheists than theo-politicians.

[Petr]

Better to be atheists than theo-politicians.
Why? You are here presupposing the Christian paradigm that it is better to be straightforwardly honest rather than cunning and dishonest.


Petr

[jcs]

Why?
"it is better to be straightforwardly honest rather than cunning and dishonest."
Those who use religion for political purposes, even if wholly sincere, fail to understand religion--religiously. They seem only able to grasp a few notions of morality, then use a 'God said so' as justification for moral-political demands.

You are here presupposing the Christian paradigm
"Haha, I got you, unbeliever! You used something Christian, you fool!"
Just to be clear here, I do not think Christians should all become atheists or such. On the contrary, I think those who call themselves 'Christian,' but understand their religion only politically, should stop being ideologues--they should stop being 'atheists' (one cannot understand something if they hold fast to a belief while not feeling, or having 'faith,' in said belief).
Most who identify themselves as Christian know nothing of Christianity--especially in America. This nation might have better numbers, but we have no faith.

[FranzJoseph]

Religion. Perhaps the most striking and important difference: the strength of Christianity here—whereas the main religious emotion in Britain is apathy.
This is what you wanted a Brit to comment on?

Pretty much. It's like this:

Freya Aswan, the Dutch Odinist, once went on record as calling the whole UK "the most spiritually advanced nation on earth right now." She was referring to a certain kind of quest for truth going on, which I would consider "religious" even if the word is not an exact fit. (Philosophic might be better.)

To American Christian crackpots, mostly of the infantile rightist variety, the fact that large numbers of English have "turned their backs on Jesus" is enough to mark the whole place down as heathen.

Strikes me as being either insulting or patronizing. Wondered how it might sound on the other end.

[Scales]

To American Christian crackpots, mostly of the infantile rightist variety, the fact that large numbers of English have "turned their backs on Jesus" is enough to mark the whole place down as heathen.

Strikes me as being either insulting or patronizing. Wondered how it might sound on the other end.

I'm an atheist, as I said; but I don't find the comment particularly offensive; there's an underlying truth to the point. My view on this is purely pragmatic; I find theological discussion pretty ridiculous. I hope this doesn't sound snobbish, but there's a class issue to this.

Generally, religion is good for the working classes. It provides valuable ethical guidelines to people who, without sufficient education, often need a divine carrot-on-a-stick in order to act with moral integrity. It also reinforces communities, provides a support network to many and enforces a culture of family values and morality which benefits kids growing up, especially in poor communities.

It also offers a reward system that transcends the materialist status system that many working class families don't have a stake in, so it works for them in terms of general motivation too.

On the other hand, to many middle-class 'educated-types', it's not of particular value. This type of person doesn't need 'faith' -they have knowledge and their personal ethics are influenced by that. They can educate their kids, and rationalise their ethics appropriately.

They don't need to envision eventual reward, because middle-class culture offers them the potential for reward in their own lifetimes. But knowledge is expensive, and for those who can't afford it, religion is a useful cheap alternative.

Note: I'm mainly talking about Christianity here; because the moment that a counter-cultural religion takes root, such as Islam, you get the exact opposite effect.

In that case, the ethical system that the religion offers is suddenly in opposition to the society it's a part of. And because it doesn't offer a rational, knowledge-based ethical system, its effects are very difficult to subdue once it's established as a cultural entity.

I think that religion is a great way of supporting the weaker members of society, but only if its precepts are in harmony with its environment.

As we've seen in Britain, if the values of that society too radically contradict the ethical system of the religion, those same individuals who it once subdued now become inflamed. This is probably because religion doesn't 'adapt' to its environment; it tries to force its environment into a state of compatibility with it.

[Sandee]

A somewhat controversial article I came across:


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

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.

It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality.

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.”

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

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.

Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”

He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added.

Mr Paul delayed releasing the study until now because of Hurricane Katrina. He said that the evidence accumulated by a number of different studies suggested that religion might actually contribute to social ills. “I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance of the Christian states,” he added.

He said that most Western nations would become more religious only if the theory of evolution could be overturned and the existence of God scientifically proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would not enjoy majority support in the US unless there was a marked decline in religious belief, Mr Paul said.

“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.”

Link (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article571206.ece)

Extrapolation?

[Columnist]

Is there a link between mainstream Christianity, and accepting non-White minorities? Most professed Christians say Darwin is an evil racist, and abortion is a racist plot to wipe out non-Whites.

[Emu]

Is there a link between mainstream Christianity, and accepting non-White minorities? Most professed Christians say Darwin is an evil racist, and abortion is a racist plot to wipe out non-Whites.

Christian Churches have undergone a major paradigm shift from traditional norms rooted in Western Culture and personal morality to a theology of humanitarianism and social action.

The mainstream rejection of Darwin is probably a red herring, although from my personal experience, the "we are the world" mentality of most Christians is based on the fact that humanity is Noah's family.

[Basil Fawlty]

Re. Scotland

Bear in mind that a lot of the violence that goes on in Scotland is Catholic v. Protestant in nature

ie. you're seeing overspill from the trouble in Ireland

If a gang of Protestants beat a Catholic to death in Glasgow, how can this possibly be due to "lack of religion"?This has nothing to do with religion. In the absence of obvious external indicators, like colour, religious affiliation is the only way of differentiating ethnic identity. In Scotland it's about the Irish vs. the Huns not Catholicisim vs Protestantism.

Portraying the struggle in the north of Ireland as somehow religious was always a British propaganda ploy designed to absolve them of responsibility and allow them to portary themselves as almost a disinterested third party trying to mediate an archaic religious conflict. This was a merely mask to conceal the divide and conquer strategy that the Brtish were pursuing.