Moonbat StudyGeorge Monbiot, who I believe is the inspiration for the term "Moonbat",
has an article on how religion is bad for society. He cites quite a bit from
this study.
First, Monbiot, citing from the study:
"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 ... None of the strongly secularised, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction." Within the US, "the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and midwest" have "markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the north-east where ... secularisation, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms".But when you go to the study itself, appetizingly entitled "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies", you quickly find out that basically what the study author has done is to compare Europe to America in certain statistics (life expectancy, murder rate, etc.,) where it is commonly known that Europe is "better". Then he points out that the USA is more religious than Europe, ergo the differences must be attributable to religion. Oh, he does drag in one or two other religious countries (notably Ireland and Portugal) occasionally to provide some bulk, but it's not hard to see the anti-religious bias in this passage:
[4] Although its proponents often claim that anti-evolution creationism<1> is scientific, it has abjectly failed in the practical realms of mainstream science and hi-tech industry (Ayala et al.; Crews; Cziko; Dawkins, 1996, 1997; Dennett; Gould; Koza et al.; L. Lane; Miller; Paul and Cox; Shanks; Wise; Young and Edis). The continuing popularity of creationism in America indicates that it is in reality a theistic social-political movement partly driven by concerns over the societal consequences of disbelief in a creator (Forrest and Gross; Numbers).Why does he bring the evolution/creationism debate into this study? It certainly appears tangential at best; the only thing I can think of is that it's a convenient club to bash the religious with.
Let's think of some other ways that Europe is different than America. For starters, their economies suck in terms of generating new jobs. So we could say that atheism/agnosticism/belief in evolution leads to a dearth of new jobs. Or Europeans like soccer much better than we do; clearly while there are no atheists in foxholes, they are disproportionately represented in soccer stadia.
Silly? Of course it's silly, but no sillier than the arguments that the study's author and Monbiot make.
The rich countries in which sexual abstinence campaigns, generally inspired by religious belief, are strongest have the highest early pregnancy rates. The US is the only rich nation with teenage pregnancy levels comparable to those of developing nations: it has a worse record than India, the Philippines and Rwanda. Because they're poorly educated about sex and in denial about what they're doing (and so less likely to use contraceptives), boys who participate in abstinence programmes are more likely to get their partners pregnant than those who don't.There's a tempting logic to this, but of course it ignores history completely. Teenage pregnancy rates soared in the United States immediately after sex education became commonplace in the 1960s.
And murder rates? Can anybody explain to me how religion affects murder rates? It arguably should keep them down (by providing an additional disincentive). But even if we decide it doesn't keep them down, why should it increase them? The only possible reason would be if murders were frequently based on religion, but that doesn't happen here. It's similar with longevity and infant mortality; why should the level of religous belief in a society reduce the former and increase the latter?
Other bloggers: Terrific debunking of both the Monbiot column and the
original study here.
Also
read this, linked by the blog above.
An enterprising blogger named John Williams at Thudfactor went so far as to e-mail the Journal of Religion and Society to ask if they had any further information about Mr Paul’s experience and credentials. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but still I was astonished to read that the JRS knows nothing about this fellow--except that the e-mail address he provided to the journal is no longer in service. (Didn’t they even get a mailing address from this guy?) Mr Williams also links to a Wikipedia entry on one Gregory S. Paul that describes him as a freelance paleontologist, author and illustrator who is best known for his work and research on theropod dinosaurs . . . Freelance paleontologist?
