MODERN TIMES
Art Hobson
ahobson@uark.edu
NWA Times 29 August
2009
Religion in the
United States and other nations
Since
the United States lost its arch enemy, the Soviet Union, in 1991, Americans
have been at a loss to identify a general theme that unifies such diverse
global issues as terrorism, poverty, dictatorship, environmental decline, and
nuclear weapons. I suggest that
one such overarching theme is religion.
Largely, it's what world and domestic affairs have been about in recent
decades.
But
paradoxically we seldom discuss religion, and when we do we're tongue-tied by
social correctness. We don't
ordinarily bring up religion at, say, dinner parties. So we fail to notice that it's the most important
contemporary topic. Fortunately,
this code of silence is frequently broken by socially incorrect books,
scholarly articles, and polls.
A
groundbreaking analysis of religion and social conditions, by paleontologist
and sociological researcher Gregory Paul, was published this year in the
peer reviewed journal Evolutionary Psychology. Paul studied 17 prosperous nations including most of western
Europe plus Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States. Using survey results and other data for
each country, he researched 25 social indicators and 9 religiosity
indicators. He combined the social
indicators into an overall Successful Societies Scale (SSS) for each nation, he
combined the religiosity indicators into a "Religiosity Versus Secularism
Scale" (RVSS) for each nation, and he tabulated the correlations between
each of these indicators and scales.
The
correlation between the SSS and RVSS is the most revealing of the article's
many conclusions. The United
States is an extreme outlier, being both exceedingly dysfunctional and
exceedingly religious. We scored
a rating of 3 on the 0-to-10 SSS scale while all 16 other nations scored between
5 and 9, and a rating of 1 on the 0-to-10 RVSS scale while Ireland scored 2 and
the other 15 nations scored between 4 and 10. The correlation between religiosity and dysfunctionality is
quite strong throughout all 17 nations, with the most religious nations (the
United States, followed distantly by Ireland and Italy) being the
most socially dysfunctional and the most secular nations (Sweden, Japan,
Denmark, and France) being the most socially successful.
Looking
in detail at the social indicators, the highly religious United States scores
the most dysfunctional in per capita homicide, incarceration, juvenile
mortality, gonorrhea and syphilis infections, teenage abortions, adolescent
pregnancies, marriage duration, income disparity, poverty, work hours,
overexploitation of resources, and income inequality. In nearly all these cases, the gap between the U.S. and the
other 16 nations is large. For
example, the annual homicide rate is 6 per 100,000 for the U.S. and between 1
and 2 per 100,000 for all 16 other nations. The teenage abortion rate is 29 per 1000 for the U.S. and
between 14 and 21 per 1000 for the other nations, most of which have less
restrictive abortion laws than does the U.S. The birthrate among adolescents aged 15-17 is 34 per 1000 in
the U.S., and between 1 and 19 per 1000 in the 16 other nations.
Looking
in detail at the religiosity indicators, the socially dysfunctional United
States scores by far the most highly religious in belief in God, biblical
literalism, frequency of prayer, belief in an afterlife, belief in heaven,
and belief in hell, and has the smallest percentage of atheists and agnostics
and the lowest acceptance of evolution. For example, 63 percent
of Americans "absolutely believe in God," followed by 50 percent of
Irish and 48 percent of Italians; at the secular (and socially successful) end
of the spectrum, 4 percent of Japanese believe in God, followed by 12 percent of
Swedes and 14 percent of Danes.
Only 44 percent of Americans accept evolution, followed by 64 percent of
Irish and 67 percent of Italians; at the secular end, over 80 percent of
Swedes, Japanese, Danes, and French accept evolution.
This
evidence shoots down several popular hypotheses concerning religion. One of these is that religion is an
innate human trait. Paul's data
shows there's no "God gene."
If we were genetically pre-disposed to believe in God, the other 16
nations in Paul's study would continue to believe in God, but they don't.
Another
false hypothesis is the notion that the positive aspects of religion encourage
social habits that are more effective than government assistance in promoting a
nation's social welfare. The data
shows precisely the opposite correlation:
The least religious nations have the least social dysfunction.
Creationists
often argue that belief in evolution fosters social dysfunction. The evidence shows precisely the
opposite.
Paul's
data supports the hypothesis that people turn to religion out of despair. Citizens of progressive social welfare
nations feel reasonably secure and thus, according to this hypothesis, few feel
a need to seek supernatural protection, resulting in big drops in religious
belief. It's striking, and
supportive of this hypothesis, that as religion has declined in Europe there's
been no significant religious revival in any of the secular democracies. America's dysfunctionality and chronic
competitiveness, on the other hand, elevate our social pathology and drive us
to seek supernatural gods, boosting our religiosity levels. So religion is partly an effect of
social insecurity.
But
religion may also be a cause of social insecurity. The American religious right has promoted such ideological
wedge issues as abortion and creationism rather than addressing social
ills. These powerful conservative
forces support deregulation, lower taxes for the wealthy, faith-based
charities, and abstinence-only sex education programs, while opposing anything
that could be considered "socialized." Such policies increase America's social dysfunction,
reinforcing the religiosity that's contributing to the dysfunction.
I
welcome your thoughts. As I said,
America needs to talk about religion.