Less God, Less Crime?

Reader Rodney Smith does the Lord's work by pointing us to this story about a new study indicating that higher rates of religious belief translate into higher rates of homicide, STD transmission, non-lethal violent crime, and assorted other signs of dysfunction. "As an atheist, I want to buy into this," says godless Rod, "but it smells more than a little funny."

But not too funny for Gregory S. Paul's study in the Journal of Religion and Society to get picked up by Brits, Aussies, Micks, and more Aussies. Could they be responding to Paul's choice for Exhibit A in his catalogue of priest-ridden barbarity—the Good Ol' U.S.A.?

Not that we don't deserve the abuse, but Paul—a freelance paleontologist who has, according to his Wikipedia entry, been described as "a superior artist" even by "one of his scientific enemies, Storrs L. Olson"—is primarily interested in how religious belief correlates with belief in evolution (not too well, as you might imagine). The societal dysfunction stuff is mostly contained in some charts at the end of his study.

I skimmed the complete study with a bias in favor of Paul's religion-is-bad disposition, but was put off by a few too many "surveys showing a strong majority," figures described as "astronomical," and definitive-yet-loosey-goosey constructions like this one:

Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional. None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction.

The reference to "House majority leader T. Daley" clinched it for me. Like religion itself, this study fulfills a spiritual need (the need to diagnose Americans as bible-pounding dummies), but delivers a lot less than it promises.

The Revolutionary Worker Online calls God "the original fascist."

Diamond Joe Farah says fooey to this "pseudo-intellectual case"—and he's got the ancient texts to back it up.