Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'

[burythehatchet]

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.

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

I can't comment on the study itself because I haven't read it, but I would certainly agree with the conclusions based on my personal observations.

[silverweb]

1. Interesting.

Bookmarked to read thoroughly later.

Thanks! :hi:

[Angry Girl]

2. As George Carlin once said,

The Christians are coming toget you and they are not pleasant people!

NOTE: Thees ees a joke. I have nothing against (most) Christians. I try to discriminate against everyone equally! :-)

[Nay]

3. Certainly true in my opinion. Religion tends to thwart progress of

many kinds because it insists that its ideology be put first, rather than reality.

[Zynx]

4. It is an interesting study, though I have always warned about correlation

and causation analysis. I think the greatest reason our numbers in everything from literacy to murder rates to rates of STDs are so much worse than the Europeans' is that our poverty is much more widespread and much deeper than the poverty seen in Europe. If one goes back to the 17th and 18th centuries they will find that the rates of crime were far higher than they were even 100 years later in Europe and elsewhere without a significant change in the religious beliefs of the populations of those countries. Overwhelmingly, people still believed in deistic creation during the period of decline in crime and the vast majority still belonged to some kind of organized religion. The biggest change in that period of time is that conditions for the working class, while still poor, improved considerably and many moved into the middle class.

[enigma000]

5. What about demographics?

Secular Europe has a birthrate well below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. The EU average is 1.5 children per women, while the US is at 2.1. Does religion play a part in the desire to reproduce? If so, then religion for all its faults, may be an evolutionary advantage (feel the irony).

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html

[sweetheart]

6. It depends if its really god

If it really is REALLY the divine unity of life, the miracle of the
awakeness we all take forgranted, the supraconscious unity that all
mystical traditions have sought direct awareness of for 1000's of years,
that total awareness of life as pervasive-god.

And perhaps if a country was inhabited by enlightened people who saw
sacred unity in all things, that an aura of protection is afforded them
by god (god being an allegory for "nirvana,satori,samadhi,samsara,allah,
jehovah,the mother earth, the unity of the land"

If more people were aware of god, then they are truly blessed, just like
the christian book says, as their lives are the kingdom. :-)

It is an ontological choice to see all of life as sacred, and to *know*
all of life is sacred, and people who really know that, "are that",
are blessed and all who travel with them have good luck. There is
a truth to the whole thing perhaps, and maybe though god has been
trivialized in its poorly communicated mythical charicature,
sacred direct awakeness "of god" if you will, is the blessing of god.

And tibetan religion has it, that at the moment of death, your "soul"
passes through several stages of dissolution in to the causal reincarnate
root dimensions, Causal DNA, much like the system tables of a database,
in their meta-metadata relationship with the database, there is a,
meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta-meta human conciousness, and one could
call that unity god, a mystical goodwill that grants magic wishes,
a real profound enlightenment with enlightened persons in enlightened
traditions that show people more and more about how god is within
them, and all of life is innate profound.

And then a priesthood is born after generations of the traditions of
the dead god-awake persons, and we fall in to a chasm of studying
the footprints out of novelty, rather than looking at our relationship
to gods kingdom.

Gods kingdom is found in nature and communion with silence (meditation).

To know gods kingdom, even just a smidgeon, is a grace, not a curse.

Even "god" has become maligned in this partisan war to depose *.

[burythehatchet]

7. thank you for a thoughtful post

I completely agree with you. The catch in the headline is "on your side". When a culture proclaims God to be on their side...we know where that goes.

[sweetheart]

8. Yes, a god that picks sides... .hmmmm.

, a logical fallacy by the very concept.

Maybe God blesses our great good fortune to discuss such happy topics
in the public eye at a time of such despotic decline.

But what if God HAS taken sides, and sits with the vast majority of
humanity on this earth whilst the rich elites who fight against him
suffer in their vanity.

:-)

Thank you for this discussion.