In total the evidence is conclusive. Far being be a shining example, America is to a disturbing degree a societal basket case by western norms. Nor has any nation that adheres to the sort of religious, cultural, political and economic values that O’Reilly, Coulter, Buchanan, Ham and company prefer has ever enjoyed low levels of societal dysfunction. Even in the 1950s the even more religious USA exhibited rates of homicide far above Euro levels, and 500 years ago pious Europe was itself plagued by incredible levels of murder, other crimes, and social strife. Conversely, the more the progressive, secular and pro-evolution are the peoples of a country are, the better off they tend to be. Scandinavia, France, and Japan are not utopias and have serious problems, but such over all good conditions have never been seen before in history. They should be receiving praise rather than knee jerk condemnation for daring to reject the conservative Christian world-view. The right wing thesis that progressive secular values and policies are antagonistic to good societal conditions and create death cultures is a patent fabrication, and constitutes a form of social slander intended to mislead and confuse. Instead, it is the secular nations that best qualify as “Cultures of Life.”
As you can imagine, the conservative reaction to the research of myself and others demonstrating the success of secular societies has not been a happy one. Among other things I was denounced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed as long on illogical and empty polemics as it was on data. Some more legitimate critical points have been raised, but no critic has been able to produce a set of data that shows that the secularized democracies are less healthy than the more religious ones. So the science is in. It is no longer possible to claim that church going America is socially superior to the prosperous countries were folks spend Sunday doing something else, and the right cannot honestly claim that progressive secularism is bad for national societies -- not that that will stop them. Liberals need to become informed as to the facts to counter the wedge propaganda of the conservatives. But deeper questions remain. Why are the secular democracies doing so much better than those that have not adopted progressive policies? Do conservative values and policies actually contribute to societal ills, or do healthy social conditions promote cultural secularism, or are both factors at play? That will be the subject of subsequent essays.
Further reading and documentation –
Gregory Paul “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look,” Journal of Religion and Society (2005), 5, http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html. Two replies were subsequently published in JR&S, one from a team from Cedarville College, a Bible college that recently hosted a creationist conference promoting the delusion that dinosaurs and humans shared to newly formed planet 6000 years ago. My reply in turn was declined with the explanation that the journal would no longer publish papers on the subject. Michael Shermer “Bowling for God,” Scientific American (2006) 12: 44,www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=D27BB754-E7F2-99DF-3E2F8A28942743F5. Gregory Paul “The Real Reason the Religious Right is Losing America,” OpEdNews (2007) 12/16, Theodore Dalrymple “So That's the Reason,”
The Wall Street Journal (2005)
10/14,www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110007405. Rosa Brooks “The Dark Side of Faith: It's Official: Too Much Faith May Be a Dangerous Thing,” The Los Angeles Times (2005) 10/1, rosabrooks.squarespace.com/la-times-columns-links. Ruth Gledhill “Societies
Worse Off 'When They Have God On Their Side,”The London Times (2005) 9/27, www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1798944,00.html.
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