Pharyngula::Sinners in the hands of an angry phantasm

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Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Sinners in the hands of an angry phantasm

PZ Myers • 121 Comments (last page)

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.”

Now, to be fair, I don't think this necessarily says that being religious is bad for the individual; it's just not good for a culture. I also think it's a bit sweeping in associating these ills with religious belief in general, because the US is afflicted with particularly malignant forms of religion (and at the root, the problem may not be religion itself, but irrationality and anti-intellectualism and ignorance, something our country has in volume). On the other hand, countries with more traditional religions also seem to have some serious problems (who knew Portugal was such a mess?).

But heck yeah, it seems obvious to me that if you base national policy on pious ignorance and the low-rent tribal power fantasies of a bronze-age gang of thugs, you're not going to cope well with the real issues of a modern pluralist society.

Here's some of the data, correlating god-belief with homicide rates and mean life expectancy. That little "U" that's typically floating off by itself as an outlier (and not on the good side) is us.

A = Australia
C = Canada
D = Denmark
E = Great Britain
F = France
G = Germany
H = Holland
I = Ireland
J = Japan
L = Switzerland
N = Norway
P = Portugal
R = Austria
S = Spain
T = Italy
U = United States
W = Sweden
Z = New Zealand

(via Omniorthogonal)

I've noticed that a few people are freaking out over this study, and are in denial. Mostly it is because they are misinterpreting it; it does not say that if you believe in God, you will get an abortion and start murdering strangers. It says that prevalent god-belief in a culture does not discourage that sort of behavior, and that more secular societies are clearly not hotbeds of sin and corruption.

If the data showed that the U.S. enjoyed higher rates of societal health than the more secular, pro-evolution democracies, then the opinion that popular belief in a creator is strongly beneficial to national cultures would be supported. Although they are by no means utopias, the populations of secular democracies are clearly able to govern themselves and maintain societal cohesion. Indeed, the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical “cultures of life” that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developing democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards. The non-religious, pro-evolution 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. Contradicting these conclusions requires demonstrating a positive link between theism and societal conditions in the first world with a similarly large body of data - a doubtful possibility in view of the observable trends.

Why this should be triggering such knee-jerk antipathy is a mystery to me; is denying the efficacy of religion and the perfection of American society, and providing evidence for same, such a horrifying idea to people? Apparently, it is.

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Comments:

#41850: Jim Harrison — 09/27 at 10:46 AM
Religion is a form of self-medication whose side effects are often worse than the pain it is supposed to relieve.
I doubt if a lack of religion leads to societal decline, but it's a good bet that economic and social disruption leads to increased religiosity. The Bush Administration is currently conducting a continent-wide trial of my hypothesis.

#41851: — 09/27 at 10:50 AM
Uber and Dave have a point in need of updating. In the past, Spanish people used to smell of incense to avoid la Santísima Inquisición and later, under el hijo de puta Franco, el paredón. Today, Spain is a liberal, secular, no, anti-religious country with a godless Socialist government.

Quod natura non sunt turpia

#41854: — 09/27 at 11:02 AM
I think the whole point is that despite what people like Pat Robertson constantly say a more religious and pious country does not mean that it will be a more functional society and in fact a nation whose populace are highly dogmatic (and I think this is the key) are more likely to have social problems. I think this make sense because dogmatism leads to intolerance and dogmatic people try to silence dissent. So embracing Pat Robertson-style christanity will probably make a nation worse off which contradicts the basis of the entire Fundementalist evangelical movement in my opinion. I think this is pretty clear even without this study.

#41860: — 09/27 at 11:15 AM
Name just one prosperous Islamic democracy.

Indonesia.

#41861: — 09/27 at 11:21 AM
Yes but what is the homocide rate/life expectancy rate/etc. in Indonesia?

#41862: — 09/27 at 11:31 AM
I think there is a great deal of confusion about causes and effects as a general matter here. I don't think that religion is just an "effect" or some kind of epiphenomena in relation to social circumstances. Ask yourselves the follwing question: What is wrong with the unscrupulous manipulation of the poor? I think that's a rhetorical question. I agree with you that the poor are more liable to be manipulated, but that doesn't justify its occurence nor justify the religions themselves or their leaders who prey on these people's ignorance. To me that is what religion is, does and will always be.

Religions are fundamentally based on the rejection of this world in favor of something that doensn't exist. I find that morally repugnant and I do everything in my power to oppose it. It concerns me a lot more than politics does, because I believe very profoundly in the power of ideas and words to effect people's behavior even more than social circumstances.

#41874: The Commissar — 09/27 at 12:06 PM
"Horrifying"

It's horrifying that people concoct misleading pseudo-science to promote a social, political agenda. That's what Creationists do.

Any scientist should be ashamed to quote and link uncritically to such a thing.

#41875: PZ Myers — 09/27 at 12:19 PM
You're going to have to work much harder to show that it is misleading pseudoscience. Criticize the actual paper, rather than your boneheaded, kneejerk misinterpretations of it.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#41876: The Commissar — 09/27 at 12:22 PM
The average U.S. data is too broad to be useful.

Break the U.S. data down into any meaningful subset and that destroys the study’s argument, its “refutation of the claim of a benefit of religion.” Whether the study is making a positive or negative claim is irrelevant. It is deliberately using average U.S. data, when more homogenous subsets are readily availability and more useful to understanding a large, diverse country.

That's not "boneheaded and kneejerk."

#41877: The Commissar — 09/27 at 12:26 PM
Since we've gotten down to the ad hominem phase of the comment thread, I have made my point and I'm done.

#41878: Orac — 09/27 at 12:32 PM
Re: Your addendum

PZ,

You said:

I've noticed that a few people are freaking out over this study, and are in denial. Mostly it is because they are misinterpreting it; it does not say that if you believe in God, you will get an abortion and start murdering strangers. It says that prevalent god-belief in a culture does not discourage that sort of behavior, and that more secular societies are clearly not hotbeds of sin and corruption.

Fair enough; that's more or less what the study said, as methodologically suspect as it was. However, in your original post, you did seem (at least to me) to imply that the study supported the contention that religiosity was correlated with all these bad things, just as did the news article that you cited did. Referring to the study, you seemed to buy into what the news article said about it:

Now, to be fair, I don’t think this necessarily says that being religious is bad for the individual; it’s just not good for a culture. I also think it’s a bit sweeping in associating these ills with religious belief in general, because the US is afflicted with particularly malignant forms of religion (and at the root, the problem may not be religion itself, but irrationality and anti-intellectualism and ignorance, something our country has in volume).

I’ll give you credit for calling the claimed association “a bit sweeping.” Unfortunately, the problem is that you can’t really determine from this study whether there is or is not such a correlation in the first place, much less conclude from it that religion is “just not good for a culture.” In fact, you can’t really conclude anything from this study. The sample is too small, and there is no correlation presented that passes even the most minimal statistical or scientific muster. As I said before, it’s all “star charts.” Yes, the authors do not claim a causal relationship, thus sparing themselves from the “correlation does not equal causation” charge, but unfortunately they don't even manage to show convincingly the correlation claimed. Even as preliminary work, this study sucks big time.

PZ, I gotta say I’m a bit disappointed. You usually have much higher standards than this.

--
Orac “A statement of fact cannot be insolent.”
http://oracknows.blogspot.com

#41881: Orac — 09/27 at 12:34 PM
I meant to say: You usually have much higher standards than this, such that even when I disagree with you I have to take you seriously.

--
Orac “A statement of fact cannot be insolent.”
http://oracknows.blogspot.com

#41887: PZ Myers — 09/27 at 12:55 PM
I'll defend the work. It's very specific in scope, and you're imposing interpretations on it that were not made.

It is the case that the US is an incredibly religious nation. It is the case that our leaders claim that this is a virtue. It is the case that there is an increasing involvement of the religious, especially on the right, in secular affairs. It is also the case that our country is a mess of contradictions, with abominable social inequities, urban crime, and now with the most religious administration in memory in office, a history of international atrocities and unjust war.

The only objection I have to the paper is that what it states is too trivial and obvious: religion has not helped us in any way on these matters, and that other states that are not afflicted with the godly meddlers in secular affairs are doing better than we are.

As I mentioned in the article, I don't view religion as causal, but as symptomatic. We're screwing up our culture in multiple ways. But the answer is not to turn to religion, that false hope and refuge of charlatans.

I'd also add that the claim that the US is too big and diverse is a red herring. Go ahead and break it down into smaller units, and as the paper mentions, you'll see the same thing: religiosity is correlated with poverty, with crime, with poor educational systems.

And just for the Commissar, it's also correlated with the right-wing red states.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#41896: just john — 09/27 at 01:13 PM
As the guy who writes The Daily Howler warns, always be suspicious of stories that are too pleasing. So I knew the headlines to the news reports about this study were too good to be true.

When sending the study back for re-working and expansion, let me add this suggestion: Check out the data for greatest belief in a devil. That's one of the places the US really sticks out, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a closer correlation.

#41899: — 09/27 at 01:30 PM
I don't think that all American religiosity should be lumped in with the Religious Right. There's also more-or-less European-style "cultural" religiosity, and also what might be called a Religious Left. But we've seen very little of the Religious Left; they have even gotten together some months back to mourn their lost political clout.

But just the same, this study makes some interesting points; I think it's worth exploring further.

#41900: — 09/27 at 01:31 PM

where is communist China, U.S.S.R, Cuba, or Khmer Rouge?

'Khmer Rouge' is a political party, not a country.

And the USSR isn't a country anymore. Sorry.

Try paying more attention in geography class.

#41901: — 09/27 at 01:36 PM
Paraphrasing Homer Simpson:

"Religion: the cause of -- and the solution to -- all of life's problems!"

#41902: DouglasG — 09/27 at 01:38 PM
Japan is another difficult part of this study. The chart indicates that they have a low belief in god. However, there are religious shrines all over that country. Shintoism isn't monotheistic. Thus, only the Christians in Japan are reflected in the study. That is a bit of a flaw...

Douglas E. Gogerty
-----
“No, I’m from Iowa. I just work in outer space.”
-James T. Kirk

#41905: Hank Fox — 09/27 at 01:46 PM
Judging from the response here, and from what I know generally about the religious climate in the US, I expect Creighton University, the origin-place of the study, to be attacked by a thousand conservative Christian voices.

My original thought was that the news article on the study, which was published in the UK, could never have been printed in the US. It wouldn't have made it through editorial boards.

I am actually hoping for the Christian roar of outrage, though, so that stories about the CONTROVERSY will get published. Americans in general will get to hear a new idea vis a vis the impact of religiosity in the US.

#41906: — 09/27 at 01:47 PM
Since we've gotten down to the ad hominem phase of the comment thread, I have made my point and I'm done.

The quintessential expression of the troll:

1) Throw around a lot of snide innuendo and crude parodies of your opponent.

2) when someone finally argues back, cry persecution, claim you're above it all, then disappear.

#41909: — 09/27 at 02:10 PM

The quintessential expression of the troll

George, it would be very wrong to think that The Commissar is a troll. He is fighting on the side of science, and does heck of a job debunking Intelligent Design Creationism.

#41910: PZ Myers — 09/27 at 02:15 PM
Right. Not a troll, just misguided, mistaken, and delusional.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#41914: Orac — 09/27 at 02:52 PM
PZ,

Unfortunately, you haven't really addressed the study's true shortcomings: That its sample size is too small and that the authors didn't bother even to attempt to show any statistics that actually show correlation, mainly because the graphs presented are too much star charts to make any real conclusions one way or the other. Heck, I've done experiments that produced graphs that looked like the ones in this paper, looking for correlations, for instance, between the level of certain factors and tumor invasiveness and aggressiveness. I didn't bother even to try to publish the results, except as examples of zero correlation, because I knew reviewers would have a hearty laugh before dropping my paper into the cylindrical file, where it would have belonged had I tried to overreach so much. (I wish I could find a journal with reviewers as lax as those for The Journal of Religion and Society apparently are. I'd probably have 100 publications by now...)

Besides, how am I misinterpreting? Here is a direct quote from the paper:

Despite a significant decline from a recent peak in the 1980s (Rosenfeld), the U.S. is the only prosperous democracy that retains high homicide rates, making it a strong outlier in this regard (Beeghley; Doyle, 2000). Similarly, theistic Portugal also has rates of homicides well above the secular developing democracy norm. Mass student murders in schools are rare, and have subsided somewhat since the 1990s, but the U.S. has experienced many more (National School Safety Center) than all the secular developing democracies combined. Other prosperous democracies do not significantly exceed the U.S. in rates of nonviolent and in non-lethal violent crime (Beeghley; Farrington and Langan; Neapoletan), and are often lower in this regard. The United States exhibits typical rates of youth suicide (WHO), which show little if any correlation with theistic factors in the prosperous democracies (Figure 3). The positive correlation between pro-theistic factors and juvenile mortality is remarkable, especially regarding absolute belief, and even prayer (Figure 4). Life spans tend to decrease as rates of religiosity rise (Figure 5), especially as a function of absolute belief. Denmark is the only exception. Unlike questionable small-scale epidemiological studies by Harris et al. and Koenig and Larson, higher rates of religious affiliation, attendance, and prayer do not result in lower juvenile-adult mortality rates on a cross-national basis.<6>

They are claiming positive correlation between "pro-theistic factors" and juvenile mortality and decreased life spans. (It also occurs to me, given that the U.S. and Portugal are such obvious "outliers" on graph of homicide rates as a function of belief in God, it would be interesting to see what happens if you remove them. If you do, the curve would suddenly be at least flat and maybe even trending slightly downward, showing a slightly negative correlation between homicide rates and religiosity. So wouldn't the better question from that graph be what makes Portugal and the U.S. such outliers, rather than claiming that belief in God correlates with increased homicide rates?)

Next the authors claim correlation between belief in a creator with adolescent abortion rates:

Increasing adolescent abortion rates show positive correlation with increasing belief and worship of a creator, and negative correlation with increasing non-theism and acceptance of evolution; again rates are uniquely high in the U.S.

And again for emphasis:

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 (Figures 1-9).

The problem is, the graphs there show no such thing, at least not convincingly. The numbers are too low; there's way too much scatter; and I'm guessing that, had they bothered to actually do the proper statistics that the r^2 value would be around 0.1 or 0.2. Yeah, they make some qualifications and state that their inability to find a correlation refutes the religious who claim that increased devotion to religion has societal benefits, but you can't escape that the authors do, in fact, claim a correlation between religiosity and various bad things, like homicide and adolescent abortion on the basis of exceedingly flimsy evidence indeed.

The authors may be correct, but this paper sure as hell isn't even mildly persuasive evidence that they are.

--
Orac “A statement of fact cannot be insolent.”
http://oracknows.blogspot.com

#41915: Kele — 09/27 at 02:59 PM
Am I reading <a href=http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11fig/fig1.jpg>this graph</a> wrong or do only ~42% of atheist and agnostics in the US accept human evolution?

#41917: Kele — 09/27 at 03:10 PM
Oops, didn't realize those tags don't work here.

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Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Sinners in the hands of an angry phantasm

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