Highly secular democracies consistently enjoy low rates of societal dysfunction
An abstract of an article in the Journal of Religion and Society saysLarge-scale surveys show dramatic declines in religiosity in favor of secularization in the developed democracies. Popular acceptance of evolutionary science correlates negatively with levels of religiosity, and the United States is the only prosperous nation where the majority absolutely believes in a creator and evolutionary science is unpopular. Abundant data is available on rates of societal dysfunction and health in the first world. Cross-national comparisons of highly differing rates of religiosity and societal conditions form a mass epidemiological experiment that can be used to test whether high rates of belief in and worship of a creator are necessary for high levels of social health. Data correlations show that in almost all regards the highly secular democracies consistently enjoy low rates of societal dysfunction, while pro-religious and anti-evolution America performs poorly.The article, by Gregory S. Paul, is entitled Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look.
posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 7:27 AM
1 Comments:
It would be interesting to know their definition of 'societal dysfunction' and 'social health'. If the quieting of conscience is related to social health, then secularism may just indicate the conceptual dissonance. This may be good if the absence of CD does not itself give rise to other ailments. However, these other ailments may themselves not be construed as 'ailments' given the naturalness accorded to the current system. Thus, the 'war on terror' or the production of the term 'terrorism' does not seem to be an ailment but a legitimate reaction in accordance with the spirit of the system.
The ending of conflict - conceptual dissonance - is an indicator of the ending of the basis upon which certain variants of social health may be compromised and simultaneously the removal of the basis upon which certain attitudes and behaviour, given the attributed 'naturalness' and legitimacy of the system, may be construed as dysfunctional under another system.
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