Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Rates of religious belief correlate with homicide, abortion, early mortality, and STDs

Pharyngula cites and quotes from a study in the Journal of Religion and Society which observes that
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.

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2 comments:

  1. EinzigeSeptember 28, 2005 at 8:34 PM

    Where is Wanchick's commentary on this, given that it is a direct contradiction to the claim he made recently that, e.g., teen pregnancy is up?

    (Please note that - if you couldn't already tell - my tongue is currently placed firmly in my cheek)

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  2. LippardSeptember 29, 2005 at 5:19 PM

    This study doesn't contradict Wanchick on the data, only on the possible causes. The study says "Early adolescent pregnancy and birth have dropped in the developing democracies (Abma et al.; Singh and Darroch), but rates are two to dozens of times higher in the U.S. where the decline has been more modest (Figure 9)."

    Figure 9 is here: http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11fig/fig9.jpg

    BTW, the Pharyngula comments give some evidence that this is not a very good study--though the fact remains that the U.S. is an outlier (in a bad way) on these scales.

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